Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/381

 368 F. H. BEADLEY : conjoined by reflex action on the environment; but of course the salient connexions in those points of the environment, which have thus become emphasised by pleasure and pain, will enter into the groups. The way in which these unions come to be made may, I think, be assumed, and what I wish to urge is that at first they are neither subjective nor objective, nor have aspects distinguished. They are felt wholes in which the features all run together. The next point is the formation within these groups of features accidental and essential. I, of course, do not mean that they are known in that character. What I mean is that con- nexions have degrees of strength. When in the struggle of the elements repetition of the pleasant has sometimes led to pain, when the object and the movement (sensations A and B) have had one sequel CD and another EF, then what has been uniform coheres and defies competition, as the variable and occasional hardly can do. We have therefore some groups weak throughout, and within every group we get aspects connected strongly, while others are attached feebly. This point is of importance. If we leave these formal considerations and look at the content of our groups, we find a striking difference. There is one of our groups, or one set of features in our various groups, which bears a special character. In the first place it is always (more or less of it) there ; in the next place it is connected with pain and with pleasure as no other group is. It is thus permanent, essential and emphatic, against the variable and that which in comparison is accidental. First, what are its contents ? The core of them is formed by that bundle of feelings which always is given, and which later we know as internal sensations. And (to anticipate) round this core, and identified with it, comes the whole body-group of sensations. This (still to anticipate) becomes the re- presentative of the group we call self. And (anticipating further) let us ask what distinguishes the body from foreign objects. It is this mainly, that any alteration whatever of my body (whether regarded as antecedent to or as sequent on other events) is connected with pain and pleasure. It is not, I should say, strictly true that any change of my body- group must be felt as painful or pleasant. What is true is that the exceptions are too weak to affect the force of the association. And further, the changes of the body-group bring pain or pleasure immediately. It is not so with other groups. These are painful or pleasant when in certain relations, and in others their character is turned to the opposite, or fails altogether. Hence the pain or the pleasure